


life & death (& time makes three)

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - Natasha Pulley
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 10:14:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10274642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: Grace --not Grace Carrow, the thwarted genius, but Grace the Primordial, Lady Life-- knew her duty well, if only because she was the one that had tailored the world to fit her inclinations.





	

 

 

Grace never knew how much Thaniel was aware of. A part of him, the part of him that bumped into her in a party and saw right through her green dress, must be aware of the truth --the Truth, the One Truth-- but there had been no recognition about him, then or afterwards, not even when she made sure there would be tulips on their meeting. He had always hated tulips, because she had created them during one of their spats to prove some point she couldn't remember now, and because he had never much understood about active anger. His Nature was of a more understated devotion hidden as passivity, and anything else he saw as spiteful.

In the big scope of things it didn't particularly matter, but the not knowing nagged at her. Still, it stung, when she had recognized him from the first, for who else could look so unremarkable while bursting over with music?

It was his business if he has decided to forget. It was only temporary, and she had bigger worries than that. Mori, the Being that went by Mori these days, was wooing the One who callled Itself Thaniel again, and her own part in this dance must be played. It was an old push-and-pull game they played, often boring or bitter, but it was theirs. It would be a distraction from this existence's struggles, at least, even if it was never more than a distraction. She welcomed it in good enough spirits, because she was Life and Life was relentlessly, ruthlessly pragmatic. She left the arts to Death, and the dreaming to Time. 

Grace --not Grace Carrow, the lady-physicist, the thwarted genius, but Grace the Primordial, Lady Life-- knew her duty well, if only because she was the one that had tailored the world to fit her inclinations.

There was, of course, no doubt about whether Mori remembered. Time, the Being and the Idea both, always remembered. In her softer moments Grace pitied him. But they had carved these roles for themselves too deeply, through every defining moment that made Them who they were. Beings like them were ever-present, cyclical. Some part of them returned always, even here, in 1883's cold England winter.

The results varied: sometimes Thaniel went by his Name, stood taller, spoke only in eerie dirge-tunes. Sometimes he stayed with her, stayed his hands and acts and wishes for her, for the sake of whatever grew from the both of them; the union of Life and Death was too wondrous to ignore. It was never a bad union, but it had been some millennia since they had stopped pretending it was as full of potential as all that. Sometimes Mori was braver, spoke out earlier, and he and Thaniel curled over each other, ivy branches grown together and old, blind to anything else for however long their lifetimes were (and they were always too long, humans went uneasy around them after a while). Sometimes, more often than any of them liked to accept, Thaniel bound all three of them together, in marriage or friendship or only grudging peace.

And sometimes it was not so grudging. Grace never quite knew what to think of those lifetimes, but she was a scientist. She was Science, and Growth, and not fool enough to ignore that those were the lives she remembered better, the bloodier and most beautiful ones.

This lifetime was still young. Her veins were filled with fresh young blood, ripe with the Life that was her Essence and her Nature. Tomorrow she would marry Death, a man in worn suit and eyes the color of winter. She wondered whether Time would be there, whatever he would stand beside him or behind him, what his own tireless eyes would say to hers.

Grace didn't have to wonder, though. There were golden pears growing in her garden, and a promise of frost in the air; and for this lifetime, at least, Life's own path would be Her own.

It always was, every time. 

 

 

 


End file.
